Researchers successfully bioengineered changes to a molecular “assembly line” for bioactive compounds, based in part on insights gained from small-angle x-ray scattering at the Advanced Light Source (ALS).
The ability to re-engineer these assembly lines could improve their performance and facilitate the synthesis of new medically useful compounds.
Microbes are known to possess molecular “assembly lines” that produce an important class of compounds, many of which have uses as antibiotics, antifungals, and immunosuppressants. The compounds are peptides—chains of amino acids like RNA, but shorter and produced, not by ribosomes, but by cellular machines known as nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs).
>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website
Image: Top: Comparison of experimental SAXS scattering data (black) with theoretical curves (green) obtained using an ensemble optimization method (EOM) shows excellent agreement. Bottom: LgrA structural models corresponding to the EOM analyses show large differences in conformation, similar to the differences observed using crystallography.